Frisco | August 2022

ENVIRONMENT

Stormwater crew combats beaver dam buildup with ‘beaver deceiver’

BY GRANT JOHNSON

beaver from damming up the creek. After watching a video, Smith and his team recreated the leveler with materials, such as piping, that they already had in-house for about $50. “The water ows through the pipe,” Smith said. “We built a structure that would protect the end of the pipe from being clogged [and prevent] debris being built up by beavers.” The team removed the dam and in January installed the pond leveler, nicknamed “the beaver deceiver,” in the creek. The goal of the device is to help people coexist with wildlife, Harts said. “Beavers play a role in our ecosys- tem, they just cause a problem when their ecosystem meets the manmade world, like trails and things like that,” Harts said. “We think the pond leveler is much less harmful to the beavers than picking them up in metal cages and taking them somewhere.”

The Frisco Public Works Depart- ment’s stormwater crews got crafty at the Cottonwood Creek in north Frisco after receiving a call last year that a beaver dam was causing water to ood a nearby jogging trail. Frisco Stormwater Manager Perry Harts said the city gets at least one call a month to remove beaver dams that cause water to collect in unwanted areas. After city oficials remove the debris, they know if it was caused by a beaver if the debris “just magically reappears, ” Harts said. This was the case with the buildup in Cottonwood Creek. Crews led by Supervisor Brandon Smith with assistance from the city’s Natural Resources group researched and decided to build a pond leveler, which is a device that allows water to continue to ow and prevents a

A pond leveler allows water to ow through the beaver dam. (Photos courtesy city of Frisco)

COTTONWOOD CREEK

COTTONWOOD CREEK TRAIL

The pond leveler was nicknamed the “beaver deceiver.”

COTTONWOOD BRANCH

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FRISCO EDITION • AUGUST 2022